Communication from 2016: Leap Day Comes round again

Hello World, it’s us, the bedbugs of UFM. Yeah, we know. Leap day 2016 has already passed ages ago and we are WAY overdue for our periodic survey of matters at this fine vortex of spiritual seeking. We made RantWoman wave her search bar through her email archives to find the rough draft that never got published in 2016. It’s pretty drafty and may fry the brains of people who want everything linear or who are otherwise literature major challenged. We are publishing it anyway.

We, the bedbugs, are doing the best we can, no thanks to RantWoman, who is the only scribe we have found but who keeps mumbling about technical difficulties.  Anyway, we demand she publish it as is because it reflects a snapshot of a moment in history and we are mightily miffed trying to prepare something for 2020. We wish we had access to some good translator / interpreter / Language services QA though because we are a little worried, just based on RantWoman’s current state of mind that she is either going to forget important stuff or editorialize all over the old stuff based on the current situation. [Note to selves: what will we do if RantWoman insists on digressing  about Grab The Blind Person and bless them issues stuck in the same part of the brain with one moment of language services QA? Also remember to mention vocabulary management for 2020]

As of 2016, we ourselves are having a bit of a refugee crisis. It’s not as bad as that mess in Europe or the unaccompanied minors on the US Southern border, or the pileup that will occur on the Canadian border if Donald Trump shows any signs of getting elected. But it’s pretty terrible: UFM has taken the sound panels that muffle EVERYTHING in the worship room off the walls.

RantWoman keeps exclaiming about the nice wood and about how the more live acoustics should make it easier to hear the whisper of God. Some of us want to shake her: what part of refugee crisis do you not understand? Others of us have heard that RantWoman awhile ago had visitation at her apartment from some bedbug renegades. We would be too happy to come over and teach them a thing or two, but RantWoman keeps saying no and mumbling “hasta en las mejores familias,” which we think refers both to the jail and to some prestigious hotels downtown.

Quoting from the official 2016 State of Society

We are a large, urban meeting, diverse in our personal theologies, length of Quaker experience, and expectations of community. Our size means we can take on many ministries and activities. It also brings challenges: our many visitors and new attenders are not always fully welcomed. We struggle with issues of privilege, class, and race. (DISABILITY ANYONE? ANYONE??? Dare we say Ableism???) We often find ourselves overextended.

…diverse in our personal theologies =

What does God require of us?

Is God Required?

[Speaking of God, as of 2020 RantWoman keeps mumbling about how God keeps sending people with disabilities to earth and expecting everyone to figure out how to get along. We the bedbugs are really upset: we are perfectly fine with the fact that RantWoman is pretty blind and cannot see us. That makes it SO much easier to go find that of lunch in everyone. Plus we can kind of relate to RantWoman’s quip about people with disabilities being not infrequently called to be places where either implicitly or explicitly not wanted. Hello. That’s definitely part of the bedbug gig too!]

The Buddhist principle of sitting with the question of what a problem is trying to teach

Voices whose practice of Quaker confession including acknowledging that too much Buddhism makes them want to punch someone.

[We the bedbugs of 2020 understand that our scribe RantWoman’s badly behaved white cane and anger management consultant Ambassador Thwack now has his own Twitter feed and RantWoman has allowed him to branch out in the direction of simple percussive pedagogy. We think thwacking inanimate objects such as poorly parked bikeshare bikes and cars camped in crosswalks is probably more responsible than even contemplating punching people. Also we are sorry to hear that She who has Dominion over RantWoman’s Domain, aka the Queen of Spades still has not figured out she should just stay out of Thwack’s way. And we will TRY to corral RantWoman’s capacity to digress along many different threads at once. We will TRY but RantWoman keeps muttering about Bach-style counterpoint and the bits of German stuck in her head: “Der Mann kann (go to the moon and back) aber keine katze Machen (but can’t make a cat) . Der Mann? What about die Frau?!? RantWoman, stay with us, please.]

What one Friend calls the Quaker seamless garment, healing inwardly as we seek to transform our world.

From 2016, even worse in 2020

Our regions roads and infrastructure are groaning partly because of our state’s habit of giving large employers tax breaks when we could really stand to invest more in transportation; yet some among us are able to give generously to the meeting because of jobs with exactly those employers.

But RantWoman, where are the sex offenders?

As of 2020, the officially adjudicated sex offenders are just fine. The cost of living in Seattle has sent one household to points south and to a situation RantWoman is holding in the Light / trying not to singe with inner Blowtorch.

Be patterns, Be Examples...

Not necessarily GOOD examples

The Ben Pink Dandelion rule that sometimes it is okay to have someone really unsuited for a role so that everyone better appreciates it when things are done right.

We the 2020 bedbugs do not quite understand this ramble from RantWoman but we are leaving it in here in a spirit of data collection:

   When I am feeling REALLY diplomatic, I also can point out that responses like (Friend RantWoman detects patterns about) from someone who manages personnel are a REALLY good argument for things like crisis lines and Employee Assistance programs and a bunch of other things like that. But they are also reasons RantWoman is allergic to State of Society reports that are all Happy talk.     

      Hold that point in the Light because it's a leap year and the bedbugs may yet hack up another missive. They are having a bit of a refugee crisis because of us taking out the sound panels in the worship room. And RantWoman is falling down in my role as clerk of the still didn't get the memo committee on email immoderation for her own technological reasons which also get in the way of being scribe for the bedbugs.

  But since the norm in minutes has been just to DELETE everything that comes out of RantWoman’s mouth, y'all have also missed a NUMBER of expressions of gratitude. [From the 2020 bedbugs: Yikes! Holy crap. Sounds like RantWoman might need  another round of apologizing for not losing her temper sooner or in more colorful terms! Except even we bedbugs need clear concise transmissions. We are not sure bedbugs holding things in the Light will help, but we think it would be highly on point for everyone!]